Basil Jarrett | If you think solving financial crimes is hard, try reporting on them

The title of the recently completed Media Institute of the Caribbean Corporate Custom Certification course, ‘Anti-Money Laundering, Countering the Financing of Terrorism, Countering the Financing of Proliferation & Financial Crimes Prevention Certification for Investigative Journalism’ is as complex as the subject matter it addresses.

And that’s before the alphabet soup of acronyms such as AML, CFT, CFP, FCPA, OFAC, PEP, EDD and FinTech are brought into the discussion.

Nonetheless, the training, which is usually reserved for bankers, compliance officers, regulators and law enforcement investigators, has finally caught up to one of the most important groups of professionals involved in the fight against complex financial crimes; journalists and reporters.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

You see, somewhere between the third “AML” and the fourth “CFT”, most normal people’s eyes glaze over, utterly dazed and confused. I know. I’ve been there. By the time the experts finish explaining just what these nomenclatures mean, the average person, and if we’re honest, the average reporter, is already lost.

But, without a thorough understanding and appreciation of these terms and their applicability in policing financial crimes, journalists face an uphill battle in trying to report how these tools impact the movement of dirty money, buy influence, traffic guns and drugs, rig contracts, and quietly bleed our economy dry. If the police, regulators and compliance officers are struggling to keep up with these terms and concepts, just imagine what it’s like for the poor journalist who is supposed to explain it all in less than 400 words or in a 280-character tweet. The course acknowledges, therefore, that if the crimes are difficult to solve, imagine reporting on them.

That is the gap that this recently completed regional certification course set out to close.

Run by the Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes (AMLFC) Institute for the Media Institute of the Caribbean, the course was designed, not for bankers or law enforcement persons, but specifically for investigative journalists from across the region.

The logic is simple. You cannot have serious public oversight or understanding of financial crime if your storytellers themselves don’t understand the story.

TELL THE STORY

Modern financial investigations operate in a world where money no longer moves as cash in a brown paper bag. It moves as data, flowing through correspondent banks, shell companies and crypto wallets. It is masked by layers of seemingly legitimate transactions and buried deep under legal and regulatory jargon. It is cyber-enabled and increasingly cyber-dependent, giving rise to increased incidents of online fraud, phishing campaigns, romance scams and elaborate Ponzi schemes.

This course, therefore, dropped journalists right into the world of global AML/CFT (go look it up) regulatory ecosystems, introducing them to the mechanics of money laundering and other financial crimes and corrupt practices. For once, reporters could now see cases from the perspective of those of us who work to police financial crimes, in the hope that, at the very least, they will understand why these painstaking investigations take such a long time. And this is increasingly important for a viewing and reading audience that is frustrated, impatient and baying for blood.

Journalists, therefore, must be able to make sense of and accurately report on the complex world of cyber- and cyber-enabled financial crimes, while under constant deadline pressures and the added risk of civil suits and defamation laws if they get a single detail wrong. No pressure, right?

THE COST OF LEARNING

So media houses have a decision to make: Continue to throw a general assignment reporter at a story involving cross-border wire transfers, trade-based money laundering or crypto-enabled fraud and tell them “do a likkle investigative piece”. Or invest in specialised training that teaches journalists to read a balance sheet, decode a suspicious activity report, trace company ownership across jurisdictions and understand how a blockchain transaction actually works.

Without such understanding and exposure, elaborate frauds and corrupt schemes will flourish unchallenged in the shadows until the bill lands on the public’s doorstep in the form of lost investment, international blacklisting or another bloody gang war funded by laundered cash.

Adding to the complexity of the situation, criminals are not standing still, with each day bringing new and more unique and complex ways to carry out these crimes. Our journalism, like our law enforcement capabilities, must therefore evolve with them or be left behind, shouting from the sidelines with half-baked takes on issues they don’t fully understand.

If our media houses are serious about doing these stories justice, then they need to fund these trainings and make time for reporters to attend them, all while offering career paths that reward deep, complex, slow journalism, not just volume and “breaking news”.

This Media Institute of the Caribbean certification is therefore a small but important step in the right direction. It acknowledges that, in the battle against sophisticated financial crime, information is a weapon and journalists, when properly trained, are part of the armoury. If we expect them to follow the money, the least we can do is teach them the map.

Whether we like it or not, Jamaica is becoming more deeply plugged into global finance. That means we are attractive to people who want to hide money, wash reputations, or route transactions through jurisdictions they think nobody is watching. If those people are fluent in the language of AML, CFT, crypto and cyber, and our press isn’t, you don’t need a degree in finance to see who has the advantage.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and a crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrettand send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.